Raquel Garcia Andersen is a immigration rights organizer who is working on the deportation case of Marco Gonzalez. / Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press

by Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press

by Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press

DETROIT -- It was 4 a.m., a few days after Christmas, when the Gonzalez children last saw their father.

They had grabbed hold of his suitcase in the living room, crying and begging him to stay.

But Marco Gonzalez was facing a deportation order - and he complied. He left for Guatemala after 20 years of living in the U.S. - a place where he had raised five American-born children, bought and fixed up a modest two-story house in Detroit and worked as a pool builder for more than a decade.

But a bad check from 15 years ago cost him everything.

On Dec. 30, Gonzalez, 42, hugged his children goodbye in his family home, giving each of them a $20 bill before he left.

"He said, 'I will always stand by you. Just don't cry. I will come back one day,'" recalled his 12-year-old daughter, Milka, who, along with her siblings, tried to give her dad the money back. He refused.

"I just want my dad back," Milka said, wiping away her tears.

Gonzalez, who bought his own $320 plane ticket back to Guatemala, is among hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are getting deported annually in record numbers, though the trend may be shifting.

Deportations dropped in 2013 after four straight years of steady increases under the Obama administration. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), nearly 369,000 people were deported in fiscal year 2013, down about 10% from the previous year, which saw a record 409,849 deportations.

Unfortunately for Gonzalez, though, Guatemalans continued to be among the top deportees. In 2013, Mexico remained at the top of the list with 241,493 deportees, followed by Guatemala, which saw 47,769 kicked out of the U.S.

The government has said that most of the 2013 deportations involved people caught sneaking in at the border, or shortly after, rather than immigrants who had established themselves.

Gonzalez was the latter.

Obstacles to overcome

According to court documents and Michigan United, an immigrant advocacy group, Gonzalez arrived in Florida in 1993 after fleeing captivity from rebel forces who had abducted him while he was working in the fields with his father. They placed a sack over his head, held him captive for months in the mountains and put him in a cave for three days - hands bound to feet - when he tried to escape, records show.

Gonzalez ultimately did escape and fled to the U.S., where he sought asylum. Immigration authorities believed his testimony, records show, but his asylum case languished in the court for years while he built a life for his children and Guatemalan wife, whom he met and married here.

In 2011, an immigration judge denied him asylum, concluding Guatemala had become a more peaceful country and that it was safe for Gonzalez to return. The case remains on appeal.

Gonzalez, meanwhile, has two obstacles to overcome: The government contends he received military training while in captivity in Guatemala, making him inadmissible for asylum. His lawyers argue he was there under duress; immigration law says it doesn't matter.

Secondly, there's a bad check from 15 years ago to contend with.

According to Michigan United and court documents, Gonzalez passed a bad $300 check from his employer in 1997. The employer, a Florida bakery owner, claimed Gonzalez wrote the bad check to himself, but Gonzalez argued the opposite, according to records.

At the advice of his lawyer and hoping to get on with his life, Gonzalez pleaded guilty to uttering a forgery, not knowing his plea would one day break up his family.

"Gonzalez was found to be removable to Guatemala for having committed a crime involving moral turpitude," the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in an August 2013 order, referring to Gonzalez's check fraud case.

ICE officials would not discuss specifics of the case, issuing this statement:

"Marco Gonzalez departed the United States Dec. 30 in compliance with an order issued by an immigration judge in May 2011. Mr. Gonzalez's case received substantial due process, including a review of the immigration judge's decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, finding that he was inadmissible to the United States and ineligible for relief from removal."

The case has outraged Michigan United immigrant advocate Raquel Garcia Andersen, who has sought intervention from Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. John Conyers.

"It's really frustrating," Andersen said. "They should weigh in that he has five American children that are going to depend on him. ... He made enough money to care for his family. He paid taxes."

And he deserved some discretion from ICE, Anderson said.

"I know the law is the law. I understand it," Anderson said. "But there's no humanity in that department."

Neither Levin nor Conyers have taken any action on the Gonzalez case. Representatives from both legislators' offices are looking into the matter.

Attorney Mayra Lorenzana-Miles, one of Gonzalez's lawyers who has known him for about 15 years, is both saddened and frustrated by his case.

"People like Marco who are truly honest are being harmed. ... I think in this case, he's getting the short end of the stick," Miles said, arguing immigration reform is long overdue. "The system should have a way for him to be here."

Mike Assemany, Gonzalez's boss for 15 years, agrees.

"He's the kind of guy that you would want as a neighbor," Assemany said. "He's a good guy. He's honest. He's hard working. And he doesn't want anything other than to work and raise his family."

Assemany, who owns Backyard Creations, a pool building company, saw Gonzalez about a week before he was deported. He stopped by his home in Detroit to give him his Christmas bonus. He told Gonzalez to stay strong, and that he would look after his family.

"I'm not giving up," Assemany said.

No holiday cheer

The Gonzalez family did not celebrate Christmas this past year. There was no tree, no presents. Two miniature helicopters sit on top of the TV as reminders of their father, who had given the toy choppers to his kids in Christmas 2012.

The children, ages 4 to 14, can't eat or sleep. They cry often. And they don't want to go to school, though they do get joy from their puppy, Fluffy, a mix that their father rescued from a nearby scrap yard a week before he was deported.

"I just want my dad back," said 10-year-old Deker, who curled up next to his mother on the couch and cried as he spoke about missing his father.

Deker said that he learned about his father leaving in September.

"He told us, 'I only have three months with you left.' And I said, 'You're going to leave us?'" said Deker, fighting the tears.

Mijany, 14, the oldest, plays music, watches TV and helps her mother cook to make the time go by. Marco Jr., 8, appears confused and cries often, as does 4-year-old Rosiy and the mother, Oralia, a Guatemalan immigrant who speaks very little English and has no idea how she is going to care for her children. The mom is not a U.S. citizen. She also came to the U.S. as a war refugee in 1994 and has had no issues with immigration authorities since coming here.

Milka appears the angriest.

In the weeks before her father's deportation, her social studies teacher was teaching the class about immigration. She asked all the students to write a paper on their views about immigration.